Records management is employed by many entities, such as corporations, academic institutions, non-profit organizations, etc., to manage records to meet regulatory and/or other compliance requirements. A typical records management program encompasses many procedures, including record identification, classification, retention, searching, production and destruction. Records management procedures may be difficult and/or expensive to implement, especially in cases in which the entity possesses and/or processes a large number of records, utilizes a complex record categorization scheme, employs personnel have a wide range of expertise to implement its records management program, etc.
Known records management programs are usually based on a file plan which, for example, in the case of a corporation, may be created by a corporate records manager in consultation with the corporation's legal department/counsel. The file plan typically defines multiple categories into which a record may be classified. Associated with each category are implied or explicit membership rules which define membership in the particular category, and implied or explicit management rules which determine how records in the particular category should be managed. After the creation of the file plan, company records are classified into one or more categories based on the membership rules of each category. After classification, a record is managed under the records management program according to the management rules associated with the category or categories into which the record is classified.
As an example, an accounts receivable bill may be classified under a records management program into an accounts receivable category of an example file plan. Furthermore, the accounts receivable category may include a management rule which indicates that all accounts receivable records should be retained for a minimum number of years, such as, for example, seven years. In another example, a record may be classified into both an accounts receivable category and an accounts payable category of an example file plan. In this example, a management rule associated with the accounts receivable category may indicate that all accounts receivable records should be retained for seven years, whereas another management rule associated with the accounts payable category may indicate that all accounts payable records should be retained for five years. In such a case, the record retention procedure of the records management program may require that the record be retained for the longer of the two periods, which would be seven years.
Accuracy is often an important concern of the entity implementing a records management program. For example, records management programs designed to address federal regulations, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), may require accurate records classification and retention/destruction procedures to achieve desired compliance levels. However, the desired accuracy may be difficult to achieve with existing records management programs because of limited flexibility in the rules governing category membership and record management. For example, classification of a record into a particular category is typically a binary decision to either include or not include the record in the category. Additionally, in cases in which the record is classified into multiple categories having different management rules, processing the record according to these multiple management rules is typically restricted to simply selecting one of the rules according to some predetermined criteria. Furthermore, another factor affecting the accuracy of existing records management programs is the variability in classification results between two or more different people and/or tools performing the classification procedure and evaluating the category membership rules.